Guardian Heroes INFO BOX SYSTEMS Saturn RELEASE DATES NA - 01/25/96 Japan - 01/26/96 PUBLISHER Sega Unlike many, I have only recently had the pleasure of playing this fine game. Well, I've had it for more then a few months I suppose and I have been thouroughly entertained. First off, there are lots of enemies here. You fight half a dozen of them, move on and there's another half dozen guys just waiting for you. This can be a bit much for one person, but one of the best parts of this game is that there is always someone else there to lend you a hand whether you're playing two player or not. Yes, there's always someone there, the skeleton warrior, who is, to put it bluntly, fucking cool. The guys a beast. He wanders around and just beats the crap out of the enemies. Half the time he's actually knocking enemies into you which I always seem to find amusing. You also have slight control over the beast, but he mostly just does his own thing, which is fine because he is cool. So at its core, the game is a brawler with the playing field split into three sections that you and the enemies can hop from one to the other. This helps keep the action managable, but can also add to the confusion when there's 10 or more characters on the screen at once. When the action is just a blob of pixely sprites it's hard enough to see your character let alone tell which plane you and the enemies are all in. None of this matters because you've always got your skeleton buddy and your wide assortment of moves to help clear the screen. Can't forget to mention your magic attacks either. Depending on which of the five characters you select you can use some pretty powerful spells in case you're not too fond of buttons mashing all the enemies to death. Magic's not my style personally, but I'm sure there are some of you out there that get a kick out of it. The multiple paths and endings help to keep things interesting, along with the two player mode, and the VS mode which is for up to SIX players. Yeah, six player free for alls can get pretty crazy, saddly, I've never played one with more than two human players, but I'm sure it doubles in fun with each added player. Even the story mode in two player is awesome. There's more enemies, and you still have the skeleton warrior on your side. The game is total slowdown to the max, but it doesn't seem to matter because all the fun you'll be having will cancel out any of the negative effects of the slowdown. Grab some friends, grab some controllers and go grab yourself some Guardian Heroes.